. . . Where Lives Are at Stake

California counties’ inability to raise their own funds means that whenever they want to help one worthy program they often must hurt another. Here are just two Los Angeles County programs that deserve more money and that illustrate why Proposition 13 was a bad idea.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services now has a chance to make a slight dent in burgeoning child-abuse caseloads with the help of increased state funding; instead, the financially strapped county is considering reducing its own financial contribution and using the money elsewhere.

By so doing, it could be unwittingly imposing a death sentence on some child alive but at risk today. Harsh words, but a county review found that 11 of the 36 child homicide victims in 1984 were under county supervision. A child placed in a foster home was beaten to death just this month. When social workers lack time to build a relationship with a child, to sense when that child may be in danger, more incidents can occur.

Many caseworkers have 60 to 90 children under supervision, some with even double that number. But now Los Angeles County budget writers propose reducing county contributions from last year’s $31.6 million to $19.2 million for the coming fiscal year.

Los Angeles County acted with great humanity in creating this new department, which has the leadership and the opportunity to make life safer for these youngsters. Lives may truly be at stake if that opportunity is lost.

Lives are also at stake in the probation system. Each probation officer who works with adults averages 300 cases; each one who works with juveniles has 150 cases. Repeated efforts to cut caseloads have met fiscal frustration.

A Rand Corp. report last year found that probation as a process for rehabilitation wasn’t doing its job because probation officers often could do little more than give the offenders whom they supervise postcards to mail in at intervals. As a result, over a 40-month period, Rand found that of 1,672 men convicted of crimes and sentenced to probation in Los Angeles and Alameda counties, 65% were arrested again, 51% convicted and 34% imprisoned. And the crimes were serious--burglary, assault or robbery.

In 1984 Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed a measure that would have reduced caseloads. This summer a similar bill with a smaller price tag died in an Assembly committee. But Los Angeles County still has the option to demonstrate, on a limited scale, the merits of the intensive surveillance program that the Rand report endorsed. For $1.5 million the Deputy Probation Officers Union estimates that the county could set up a model program. The concept of intensive surveillance could then rise or fall on an evaluation based on real experience. It should not represent another missed opportunity.